


A Storm at 3 A.M.

by Emolga



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Gen, Rose Quartz mention, spoilers for Final Fantasy VII (of all things), spoilers for Steven the Sword Fighter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-12
Updated: 2014-04-12
Packaged: 2018-01-19 03:05:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1453084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emolga/pseuds/Emolga
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pearl returns after two weeks, but the storm still hasn't let up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Storm at 3 A.M.

It’s twelve past 3 in the morning, according to the digital clock on the microwave, and the previous day’s storm shows no signs of stopping. Pearl steps quietly past the temple door so not to risk waking Steven, carefully plucking her way over to the kitchen in search of the tea she craves. With a sigh, she takes inventory of the surrounding area as she feels around the cabinets for her tea-set; the beachside shack still looks like a complete disaster in spite of her past cleaning efforts, but it’s far too early in the morning for her to start tidying up again. Clearing the space can wait — though admittedly, she’s never been good at putting things out of her mind for extended periods of time.  
  
“… Pearl?”  
  
A voice yanks her from her stupor, the surprise of it causing her hand to lash out against a teacup. The darkened silhouette of Steven is standing at the bottom of the stairs, his fingers nervously twisting around one another.  
“Steven?” She quirks a brow at him, temporarily foregoing her quest for tea in order to refocus her attention. It’s hard to distinguish his face from the darkness of a stormy night, but there’s a soft glow from the television upstairs that helps to illuminate his worried expression. “What are you doing up so late? You should’ve been in bed hours ago!”  
“I can’t sleep,” he admits without looking at her, his bare toes digging into the floorboards. “But, um…”  
She waits for a moment, her hand still suspended against the cabinet’s door.  
“… Can you help me organize my toys?” Steven asks at last, his gaze still averted.  
  
For a moment she’s compelled to remind him of the time, but his obvious distress causes her to reconsider.  
“Alright,” she concedes, shutting the cabinet quietly so not to disturb any of the temple’s other tenants. “Let’s do it quickly, though. You really should get some sleep.”  
  
Steven scuttles around the counter, grabbing her hand and leading her up the stairs without breaking stride. She follows obediently, staring down at his disorganized belongings with a critical eye: The spare television is displaying some sort of game menu, and scattered about the floor below are various action figures, many of them appearing as if they’ve been flung rather than simply forgotten.  
  
“… What happened to this one?” Pearl asks once Steven releases her hand, stooping down to pick up the miniature of a blond-haired warrior wielding a large sword. There’s an obvious split bisecting the plastic, slitting the figurine’s torso like the pupil of a cat’s eye.  
Behind her, Steven hops onto his bed and looks away again, his hands still fidgeting uncomfortably.  
  
“Um, he had an accident,” the half-Gem explains weakly. “B—But it’s okay!” His voice takes on a more vibrant tone as if by magic. “That happens to him in the game, too — well, more like in his backstory — so it’s more realistic now!”  
She hums, appraising the figurine’s ‘injury’ through narrowed eyes.  
“He’s my favorite hero from any game ever,” Steven goes on to say, some of his anxieties vanishing as enthusiasm starts to overtake him. “All this bad stuff happens to him, but he still helps to save the world anyway!”  
“Oh?” Pearl feigns interest, half-listening as she begins setting toys down across the windowsill — humanoid, animal, miscellaneous, animal, animal, humanoid…  
“Yeah,” he says as she works, his legs kicking where they hang limply against the side of the mattress. “In the game, there’s a flower girl and a martial artist, and they both like him…” He hesitates for a moment. “Then the flower girl dies. The bad guy kills her.”  
“That’s terrible,” Pearl says without conviction, setting the last of the figures on the sill beside their kin before stepping back to admire her handiwork.  
“I know!” The young Gem exclaims, his hands coming down hard against the quilt to emphasize his sentiment. “— But he’s the final boss, so you get revenge eventually.”  
“Sounds like a pretty good story,” she offers, just to prove that she’d been paying attention.  
  
The now-wounded swordsman is the last figurine to make it on the shelf. With the window’s ledge now fully occupied by toys, Pearl turns to Steven resolutely, her arms crossed over her chest.  
“Okay, all of your toys are ready for bed now,” she explains in a mothering tone. “That means it’s bed-time for you, too.”  
To her surprise, Steven doesn’t so much as offer a single groan in protest. He merely stares up at her with his hands fisted in his blankets, looking strangely lost.  
“… Can you stay with me tonight?” He asks quietly — so quietly that she almost can’t hear him above the patter of rainfall. A roll of thunder sounds off somewhere in the distance, heralding a new wave of the long-lasting storm.  
  
Pearl falters, caught off-guard by the genuinely vulnerable look on the Gem-child’s face, and quickly finds that she has no choice but to agree to his proposition.  
“Alright,” she says with a smile, settling beside him on the tiny mattress. “I’ll stay here until you fall asleep.”  
  
That’s good enough for him. He reciprocates her smile and scrambles onto her lap, holding tightly to her arms as she shifts them both until her back is flush against the headboard.  
  
The room remains sleepily silent for a while, save the tapping of rain on glass and the occasional rumble from the clouds. The lull in activity is broken, however, when Steven slowly lifts his fingers and sets them against her torso, ghosting across the place where her hologram’s blade had run her straight through before settling there more firmly.  
  
His hand is soft and pliant against her stomach, infinitely warmer than a full-blooded Gem’s touch. He carefully pats the spot where he saw pointed metal make its mark, his pudgy fingertips scuttling across the silk of the teal-colored ribbon that’s tied in a sash around her midsection.  
  
“… Is it like a band-aid?” He ventures, his starry eyes staring widely up at her. She’s charmed by his innocence, but shakes her head ‘no’ all the same.  
“Not at all,” she replies, resting her slender hands against the nest of his black, curly hair. “It’s more of an aesthetic change than anything else.”  
His look of unabashed puzzlement causes her to rephrase the statement.  
“I’m wearing it because I like it,” she supplements.  
  
He pouts, his short fingers balling up the fabric within a slow-forming fist. Then, slowly — like the gradual buildup of a storm — he starts to whimper, the fascination on his face crumpling into waves of grief.  
  
“… Steven?” Pearl only manages the beginning of a question before the dam breaks, and he’s reduced to a blubbering mess before she can properly process the shift in attitude.  
“I’m sorry,” he wails between sobs, curling like an infant within her grasp. “I’m sorry.”  
“Why are you sorry?” She asks, bewildered — but he’s beyond coherence now, his entire body heaving with great sobs.  
“Just like the flower girl,” he wails, and then he can’t manage to say much of anything.  
  
Pearl encircles her arms around him protectively, as if she can somehow ward off the great sadness that’s overtaken him, and tucks the crown of his head beneath her chin.  
“Shh, it’s alright,” she soothes, stroking his hair and rocking him and doing whatever she can think to alleviate a fraction of his torment. “There’s no reason to be sorry. Everything is fine now, right? It’s okay. It’s _always_ going to be okay. I promise.”  
  
A flash of lightning illuminates the room only for a moment before plunging it back into darkness. Steven cries through the sudden downpour that follows, sobbing with all of his might; then his sobs turn to whines and the whines to sniffles, until finally the sniffling gives way to a sound sleep. The transition is so seamless that Pearl doesn’t dare to move, electing to keep the exhausted boy slumbering atop her lap with his dampened cheek resting against her chest.  
  
Perhaps he was more heavily impacted by her recent regeneration than she first thought.  
  
She remembers the violence of days gone by, witnessing Gems not unlike herself battling themselves raw until they retreated into their gemstones to heal; then their enemies would bash the gem until nothing remained but fine powder and fragments, simple remnants that could easily blow away in the wind. Gems don’t leave behind corpses, not in the way that humans do — and poor Greg, how he’d longed for something, _anything_ of Rose that he could bury…  
  
Her mouths feels dry. Tea steeped in rainwater would be a lovely treat.  
  
Pearl finds herself alone with her sentiments, newly aware of how dark the shack is with only the glow of a television to light the way. Her fingers toy with the curls of Steven’s hair as she leans against the headboard, pondering fallen Gems from the past and the monsters that came after; then she begins counting the seconds between rolls of thunder, trapping herself in a cycle of 1, 2, 3, 4... — 1, 2, 3... — 1, 2... — until her eyes close, and she surrenders to the blank void of a dreamless stasis.  
  


**Author's Note:**

> I have an essay and a speech due, so obviously I should procrastinate by working on anything but those two things.
> 
> Anyway, "Steven the Sword Fighter" was an incredible episode! Loaded with references to games I love, Pearl-centric, full of drama and angst; what more can a gal ask for?
> 
> Soooo I wrote a thing. \o/ Holla.
> 
> Also, I should mention that my train of thought with this fic was inspired by gracekraft on Tumblr: http://gracekraft.tumblr.com/post/82416170748/  
> You should definitely give her a follow if you like SU fanart and cute character designs!


End file.
